In the news

I just got the news that the two American hikers imprisoned in Iran for two years have been released. It’s been an article of faith in some quarters that the hikers had it coming — that they had no earthly…

A waterfall is simply a river pouring over a cliff and smashing onto the rocks below. The awesome spectacle blinds mere humans to the reality that a waterfall can kill with the efficiency of a white shark and the caprice…

The only Silicon Valley CEO who answers my e-mails — Joost Schreve of EveryTrail.com — lobbed a minor bombshell in my in-box this morning with news that he’d sold EveryTrail to TripAdvisor, a subsidiary of the travel giant Expedia.com. Getting…

Herr Coomber made the nightly news last night. Couldn’t help noticing the grass was mostly green when the video was shot — nice of them to get around to airing it. (A slow news day means a shortage of death,…

Yosemite Blog posted an announcement yesterday that Joshua Gunther, 34, was supposed to be out of the park Sunday after a weeklong backpacking trip from the Ostrander Lakes trail head. The announcement says only that he acquired a permit to…

This rather lurid report from the local NBC affiliate has the most details on the passing of hiker Linda Fradkin, 57, of San Mateo, who died yesterday at Santa Theresa County Park. Condolences to her family and friends.

Update IV: A Florida man was found dead Monday, apparently having fallen from a cliff near Mirror Lake in eastern Yosemite Valley. ### UPDATE III: A friend of a couple who witnessed the accident posted this account. ### UPDATE II:…

I put a short account of this story in the paper the other day: 3-year-old Joshua Childers, being an inquisitive boy of his type, simply walked away from his family’s house and wasn’t found for over two days. The puzzle…

Most of you already know the story: Ken Knight, nearly blind production editor at BackpackingLight magazine, disappeared a week ago today on the Appalachian Trail near Buena Vista, Virginia. On his seventh day of wandering he decided to light a…